. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 133 



SUMMARY. All the studies on physical chjemistry and 

 normal and pathologic biology tend to prove that the ele- 

 mentary chemical composition of albumins and of living 

 beings is very uniform and that the specific differences are 

 caused only by differences in the proportions in which these 

 elements are united into "micelles." All albumins are con- 

 structed on the same plan. Their reactions are therefore all 

 of the same nature but the chemical, osmotic and physiological 

 equilibria determined by the different proportions of the 

 elements which constitute the "micelles," vary infinitely, 

 so that they can react differently to the same reacting 

 substance. 



The chemical and physiological unit of the plasma is the 

 "micelle" which possesses for each animal or vegetable species 

 a particular and constant chemical and osmotic equilibrium. 



A "micelle" can be nourished only by the crystalloids of 

 which it is composed, and can assimilate them without 

 trouble only in the proportions in which it normally contains 

 them. It may absorb them and fix them in different propor- 

 tions but then its equilibrium is changed and it is easy to 

 imagine that by absorbing a foreign substance (salt or 

 crystalloid) in progressively increasing quantity and over a 

 sufficiently long time in order that the new state of equilib- 

 rium may become hereditary, a "micelle," a plasma, or a 

 cell may acquire new properties which will constitute a new 

 race or even a new species. 



A cell may absorb specifically different "micelles" but it 

 cannot incorporate them as such into its own plasma because 

 they possess a different nutritive equilibrium. It cannot 

 directly be nourished by them without first demolishing 

 them because the "micelles" cannot absorb other "micelles" 

 but only non-specific crystalloid compounds which come to 

 them. 



Heterogeneous particles are thus necessarily dissociated 

 when they come into a medium foreign to themselves and 

 this process of intracellular dissociation is the origin of simple 

 immunity on the one hand or of immunity-anaphylaxis on 

 the other according to the .rate of the reactions produced 

 and according as the formation of antibody in excess neutral- 



